The Home Office aims to replace most Biometric Residence Permit (BRP) physical documents with eVisas by the start of 2025. Most physical BRP documents have an expiry date of Tuesday 31 December - this is the expiry date of the physical card, so does not necessarily mean that your immigration permission will be expiring on this date. Please refer to your visa decision email or letter to find the true end date of your visa.

BRP cards or vignettes in your passport will be replaced by a digital permission known as an eVisa. In due course you will be asked to register for a UKVI account to access your eVisa. This will be in order to share your immigration status with:

• Educational institutions for study purposes
• Employers for work purposes
• Landlords for accommodation purposes

The Home Office is currently running a small-scale pilot with selected individuals who it has asked to create a UKVI account. Please note it is not yet open for all students to do this.

You should not try to register for a UKVI account currently as this is via invitation only. The system is being developed and not made public yet.

It is our understanding that UKVI is intending to share information about the true visa end date for those on student visas. For students with any other visa/immigration type we will be requesting students to share updated information via a sharecode at a later point.

It is important to note that you should not share your personal information, or click on links in emails which are not from a trusted source. When the time comes, you should go to gov.uk and follow any process there for creating a UKVI account. Full webpage addresses will be provided and can be copy and pasted into a browser.

Further information

You may find this 2 minute video that the Home Office have created useful in explaining what an eVisa is and how it will work.

You may want to read further guidance from the Home Office about these changes and its roll-out of eVisas. You can register to receive updates via this webpage.

If you used an agent’s email or an old email address for your previous visa application you should update your details with the Home Office. If this page doesn’t work, there is an alternative page to try to update your details.

Contact details

If you have any concerns please contact the Immigration team.